[whatwg] Space characters: VT and FF

Øistein E. Andersen liszt at coq.no
Fri Aug 28 17:38:31 PDT 2009


As far as I can tell, vertical tab ('\v') is not defined as a space  
character anymore, but does not cause a parse error either (unlike  
other control characters). Is this intentional?

In IE7, IE8 and Safari, '\v' is handled as a space character in the  
sense that it can be used to separate attributes, but this is probably  
not important, and HTML5 does not seem to prevent browsers from  
handling '\v' as white space in text content anyway.  I am sure you  
have a good reason for not defining '\v' as a space character, but  
would it not be more consistent to treat form feed ('\f') in the same  
way?  (Firefox handles both as non-space characters, IE and Safari  
handle both as space characters, and handling these two slightly  
exotic C0 white-space characters differently seems surprising.)

-- 
Øistein E. Andersen


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